Merry Dawn
by Tobiasven
Summary: Luna gets an unexpected visiter in the DADA classroom. HBP compliant. DH compliant too but no spoilers.


Title: Merry Dawn  
Author: Tobiasven 

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. I own my soul and a little hat that says Property of the U.S. Government. So, no, HP and all related angst is not mine. 

Summery: Luna meets an unexpected guest in the DADA classroom. (In my Luna is a Fey universe.) HBP compliant. DH compliant too but no spoilers.

Notes: To my lovely beta Scratches, my on-line and RL friend. May she drown in Luna's goodness.

Merry Dawn

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The best time to study was four o'clock in the morning. Luna Lovegood knew this. It was the time when all the Nightveils slinked to their corners to sleep and the Dayveils still hid from the dark. It was the perfect time to sit with a large book and study.

Hogwarts also held several places that were conducive to studying. Luna had found a few of these places. One was in the Potions classroom. Well, not exactly the classroom, it was small space a foot to the left of the storage cabinet. She used to use it all the time, up until the beginning of her fifth year. Slughorn had found her sitting there one morning. The big man nearly had a heart attack and took more points that she would repeat aloud.

Luna found another spot in a classroom of a teacher that always allowed her leeway. The Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom was lighter and warmer than her previous hideaway, but it suited her purposes. Against the wall right under the dragon's tail was the perfect spot.

Luna crawled under the dragon's skeletal tail and propped her Transfiguration book on her silk covered knees. She wore the black silk pajamas as much as she could. She had never owned anything so slinky. Luna still didn't. The girl thought about giving his clothes back but he hadn't asked for them. If he wasn't missing them she saw no reason not to keep them.

She flipped through the pages of the old book. It was a second hand copy from her uncle Emric the Eccentric. He was already in a book, high achiever by twenty-five. She turned the page to another set of rude limericks scribbled in the margins. She looked up and blushed, then her light skin turned pale.

Sitting at the table to her left was a tall scruffy man, tattoos running down both arms, and even more poking from the collar of his robes. His eyes held a ghostly opaque look. His body while complete and solid didn't look whole, Dawnveil her mind supplied.

"Stubby Boardman?" she asked.

Slowly he turned toward her. Ghost gray eyes stared from a sunken tired face. "No, Sirius Black."

"You are Harry's dogfather." Luna remembered him from the fight at the Ministry. He was good with a wand, the first into the fray. He was the only casualty. Neville told her that the man had fallen through the Veil. It was the Other Curtain, the only place in this world where both sides met. Sirius had crossed the barrier. He was a shadow now.

He blinked at her, a slow almost seductive movement. "Harry, why isn't he here?"

She looked around the room making sure Harry wasn't hiding in a corner of the room. He was prone to do that, under his invisibility cloak. It was strange how she could hear his heart beat or smell his shampoo when he was using the cloak but she couldn't see him. It was a disconcerting feeling indeed, but he wasn't there. "It's Saturday," she explained.

The shadow brought a hand up to touch his beard as if just realizing he had hands and a face. "He shouldn't be missing class."

Luna gazed back calmly. "I'm taking notes for him."

The shadow nodded. "Where is Remus…Lupin? He teaches here."

She closed her book with a snap and grinned. "Oh, Professor Lupin. He doesn't teach here anymore. People seem to dislike the werewolf thing."

Luna grimaced. "I sent him blood-pops on Christmas. A man like him shouldn't go without. I would send them on his birthday but I don't know when that is."

Sirius laid his head on the desk and turned his head to look at her. "He told me. He told me that he taught Defense. He was," His opaque eyes looked distant for a moment before he settled upon, "He was proud. It's my fault. I fucked up again, didn't I?" The shadow asked.

Luna nodded not quite sure what he meant but close enough. She fingered the peeling cover of her book, refusing to look at him. "A lot of people fucked up on that one."

He nodded then suddenly sighed. "Am I dead?"

"Yes," she said truthfully, "sort of. You fell to them, the wraiths. Sirius Black died, you…fell. You can't come back. You are one of the Veils now." She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She had never had to explain to a creature what it was.

Sirius sat up in the chair and leaned his head back. The shadow sighed again. "What good is dead if I can't see James and Lily or my brother? I don't even have the peace of nothingness." He slammed his fist into the desk, denting it.

Luna only watched him. She had never been a shadow before. She couldn't tell him that it would all be okay. "I'm sorry."

He looked around the room sullenly. His eyes fell on a skull of a kelpie before he wrenched his gaze back to Luna. "Why me?"

The Ravenclaw shrugged taking the rhetorical question literally. "Karma," she suggested.

Ghost eyes glared at her.

Luna didn't pay his dark gaze any mind. Darker things drooled over her in her sleep. "If you have so much of a good thing for so long that all the bad piles up and gets you. Or, what is the expression, 'what goes around, comes around.'"

The shadow rubbed his beard thoughtfully. "Maybe."

Luna looked away and her gray eyes lightened to a shimmering quicksilver. "Then there is Fate."

Sirius snorted. "I don't believe in Fate."

"It sure has tried to get you often enough." She saw it in his eyes, dead gray eyes that suffered so much. She wondered what was in them but dared not look deeper. Trying to read from something on the other side of the veil was immensely dangerous.

The shadow waved off the comment. "I've been here a long time. You're the first person that could see me. Why?"

Luna hummed. "If that diamond ring turns brass, Momma's gonna buy you a lookin' glass. And if that lookin' glass gets broken…" She frowned. "Through the looking glass darkly."

The shadow frowned. "Your kind does not exist."

She grinned the maniac grin that had scared so many away and reopened her book. "The rest of the world says yours doesn't either."

Sirius nodded. He rubbed at the dent in the desk. "Who's teaching Defense this year?"

"Professor Snape."

The shadow cackled. "Snivellus? Really? Well, I'll be damned. Considering I already am damned it's not much of a curse, is it?" He got up and half walked, half floated to a corner. "Turn your head, little miss."

Luna turned back to her book and heard the tale tell trickle of fluid hitting a wall. She looked up. "You can't piss on his books."

"Oh hush," he growled looking over his shoulder. "I'm sure the man whipped it out and pissed on my grave the second he heard I was gone."

Luna shrugged. She doubted the professor would waste the energy to go to a grave, even to piss on it. "He only hated you when you were around."

"Hey, I can stay here and haunt his smarmy arse till he dies."

She frowned and stared at his back. He did not understand. "Isn't that a little short sighted. You're not a ghost. He can't see you."

Sirius chuckled. "But I can sure as fuck piss on his robes."

The sound of urination fell away and she watched the shadow tucked himself back into his trousers. "Bastard," he groused.

Luna rolled her eyes. She never cared for schoolboy fights. It was all in the past and done with. She, herself, couldn't budge herself to hold a grudge for more than an hour. It just seemed like a wasteful loss of energy.

The shadow shoved his hands into his pockets and looked up. Morning light peeked through the windows and fell on his legs turning them translucent. "Can you tell Harry it's not his fault?"

"No," she said simply.

He looked at her sharply. His body suddenly became completely solid in his anger.

Luna plowed on quickly. "I'll only tell Harry if I can tell Hermione it's not her fault either, or Ron, or Professor Lupin, or Headmaster Dumbledore or Professor Snape. Fault needs to be placed where it belongs or not at all. Who you choose to blame is your own business but who really deserves it?"

The shadow bristled but his body slowly became ghostlike again. "I don't blame them. I don't…I blame myself. What happened? I don't remember."

"I don't know. I wasn't there."

"I'll tell you what happened. I got cocky." The shadow paced back and forth between the rows of desks. "It's what always happens. James used to tell me, 'Paddy, your arrogance is going to get you killed.' Well I fucking did it. No body to blame, but myself." He kicked out at a chair and it rocketed across the room.

Luna stood up and stretched. "Well, that's enough of that, the moment is gone." She dusted off the front of her pajamas with one hand.

Sirius looked down at the table he had hit. He stretched out his hand to touch the intent in the wood, and then his eyes strayed to the overturned chair. Realization dawned on his face. Luna's eyes widened in terror as the shadow took two, three steps toward her and grabbed her by the neck. She dropped the book with a loud bang and brought her hands up to grab his wrist.

The shadow pushed her up against the wall. His body pressed roughly against hers. "I can touch this world. I can touch you." He ran his hand reverently over her cheek.

She struggled under his grasp. The position was making her head spin. Something dark rose within her. She tried to tamp it down and held it, barely. "You can touch me. I am on both sides of the veil, so is every inanimate object in the world, but you can't touch the other people on this side."

Ghost eyes turned dark as they lit upon the wand tucked behind Luna's ear. He moved his hand to touch it and yelped. The wand clattered to the floor.

"What the hell?" He pulled his offended hand to his chest but didn't lessen his hold.

"You can't touch this world's magic either." Luna held tightly to the shadow's very real hand. "Release me." The command wasn't an idle threat. Her eyes moved from quicksilver to mirror clear and Sirius dropped her.

He stepped away wiping his hands on his tattered pants. "I'm sorry, I don't know what…"

She pulled at the crumpled collar of her nightshirt. She took a deep breath, her eyes slowly faded back to gray. "Don't bother, you are a Dayveil now. You can hardly be expected to behave normally at your witching hour."

He blinked at her sadly. "I don't know what to do." The shadow curled into himself then suddenly changed. The black dog had the same ghost eyes as the man that had stood before her.

Luna refused to let the expression of pity come over her face. It wouldn't do him any service. Do not pity the dead, someone once told her. Though she couldn't leave him there to trash the classroom or slowly die of loneliness and madness. She picked up her wand and book then patted the shadow dog on top of the head. "Come on, and don't you shed on my sheets."

The shadow perked up immediately and licked her hand. He nipped at the back of her shirt as she led him out of the room and up to the Ravenclaw tower. Luna smiled down at the shadow dog. Her father had never allowed her a pet, and she always wanted a pet, even an invisible, sometimes human, pet.


End file.
